What Does Judges 14:16 Mean?
And Samson's wife wept before him, and said, You only hate me, and you do not love me. You have set a riddle before the children of my people, and you have not told it to me. And he said to her, Behold, I have not told it to my father or my mother, and shall I tell it to you?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Samson’s wife wept before him, and said, Thou dost but hate me, and lovest me not: thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people, and hast not told it me. And he said unto her, Behold, I have not told it my father nor my mother, and shall I tell it thee?THE KEY
The Hebrew says “a riddle you have riddled,” making the concealed answer the very thing she reads as evidence of hate.
THE MEANING
When an answer is withheld in a close bond, the gap can start to sound like a verdict on the bond itself. Here, she reads the hidden answer as hatred, while his reply shows he has not disclosed it even to his parents. The verse holds the pain of being left outside alongside the difference between exclusion and proof of hatred.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Not being told something, by itself, does not prove that you are hated.
THE ROOT
חִידָה חַדְתָּ
ḥîdâ ḥadtā
GROWS FROM
חוּד
ḥ-w-d
To speak or pose something in an enigmatic, riddle-like form.
The Hebrew places the noun beside its cognate verb: literally, “a riddle you have riddled.” The same word family names the “dark sayings” in Psalm 78:2, so the answer is hidden inside the form of the saying itself, and here that hidden answer becomes, for her, a measure of his love.
ALSO GROWS
ḥîdâ: A riddle or enigmatic saying.
חִידָה
This is the noun Samson uses for the puzzle whose answer he has not told her.
ḥîdôt: Riddles; enigmatic or dark sayings.
חִידוֹת
Psalm 78:2 uses this plural for sayings whose meaning is carried beneath their surface.
הִגַּדְתָּהּ
higgadtāh
GROWS FROM
נָגַד
n-g-d
To stand out or be in front; by extension, to make known or declare.
This root appears in both her charge, “you have not told me”, and his answer, “I have not told” his parents. The exchange turns on what has been brought into view, and for whom.
ALSO GROWS
higgîd: To tell, declare, or make known.
הִגִּיד
This is the verb behind both statements about who has or has not been told.
nāgîd: A leader or ruler; one who stands in front.
נָגִיד
The root’s sense of what stands before someone echoes the dispute over what is placed within her view.
THE PATTERN
What remains hidden invites interpretation of the gap until the matter is searched out or brought into view.
And he said, I heard your voice in the garden, and I trembled, because I was bare; and I hid myself.The weight of God is to hide a matter; the weight of kings is to search out a matter.Therefore do not fear them, for nothing is covered that will not be uncovered, nor hidden that will not be known.THE THREAD
I will open my mouth in a likeness, and pour out riddles of old.The “dark sayings” here are חִידוֹת (ḥîdôt), from the same root as the “riddle” in Judges. The shared word family shows a saying that carries meaning beneath its surface, waiting to be opened.
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